White American male Charles Murray over at neo-con thinktank American Enterprise Institute visited France. Based on the skin color of the people he could see on the street in his range of vision, he concluded that 50% of people in France aren’t real French people. I.e. he saw a lot of people of color. Alarmed, he concludes: “Mark Steyn and Christopher Caldwell have already explained this to the rest of the world–Europe as we have known it is about to disappear–but it was still a shock to see how rapid the change has been in just the last half-dozen years.”

As you read about his “methods” of detecting who is “native French”, you see that what he was really doing was counting white people (his definition thereof) because he admits that he may have accidentally included “a few Brits and other Europeans”.

I think I know someone Charles might want to be friends with: Rob Toonkel. Rob is Director of Communications at a very special organization called U.S. English, Inc. Right now, Rob and U.S. English are freaking out because a town in Pennsylvania has erected some traffic signs in Spanish! Can you possibly conceive of the implications of the ominous act? SPANISH SPEAKERS MAY OBEY MORE TRAFFIC LAWS!!!

“The desire of individuals to carry out a certain activity is easily dimmed by the prospect of being able to survive in a world that adapts to them. People who drive gas guzzlers become less inclined to buy more fuel efficient models if gas prices begin to decline. Smokers are less likely to quit when businesses continue to accommodate smoking. And immigrants are far less likely to pursue English acquisition if they see that everything is being provided to them in their native language.

“Though erecting a few signs in Spanish may seem trivial, our experience with government multilingualism is often that the first step is just the beginning of a very slippery slope. The practice soon spreads to other areas, and beyond that, speakers of other languages clamor for signs in their native tongues. We all know what happens when you give a mouse a cookie. Unfortunately in the case of multilingual road signs, the entire community gets milked.”

Yes, he does seem to have a very firm grasp of “slippery slope.”

Why do some Americans focus so fanatically on making English our official language? As we can see in Canada or Switzerland, being a multilingual society does not hinder standard of living or achievement of human rights. So what gives? Perhaps if we consider who speaks which language… perhaps if we considered… race and class and color… I don’t know…